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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 29 ..

financial reports. On 4 November 2003 the committee heard from the Minister for Education and officials within the Department of Education, Youth and Family Services. The committee examined the CIT annual report on 3 June following its tabling in March. The reason for that is that the CIT annual report operates on a calendar year rather than a financial year.

The first three recommendations are to do with the layout of the DEYFS annual report and compliance with the Chief Minister’s annual reports directions. While the DEYFS report was generally well laid out and mostly easy to read, the committee was concerned that it received only photocopies of the report, which made it difficult to read some sections. There were also concerns about the overall consistency and accessibility of the report. The fourth recommendation relates to external scrutiny and the importance of providing a full picture of occurrences within a department. As such, the committee is highly critical that the 2002-03 annual report provides no information in regard to the impact on the department of the two coronial inquests that occurred during the 2002-03 reporting period.

The last three recommendations relate to the CIT 2002 annual report. Recommendation 5 recommends that the CIT undertake annual destination surveys of former students to ascertain the educational and vocational outcomes of students who have successfully completed their course. The committee believes that this would be useful both as a performance measure and as a promotional measure. Recommendation 6 relates to the provision of more detailed information on individual faculties. The final recommendation—recommendation 7—relates to visa requirements for overseas students.

The committee was concerned to hear that overseas students have more rigid requirements if studying a VET course than they do if studying at university. The committee believed that that had the effect of causing an uneven playing field. Finally, I thank the minister, departmental officials and CIT officials for making themselves available to the committee. I also thank the secretaries—Mr David Skinner and Ms Kerry McGlinn—who worked on this report for several months. I commend the report to the Assembly.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Public Accounts—Standing Committee

Report 7

MR SMYTH (Leader of the Opposition) (12.17): Mr Speaker, I present the following report:

Public Accounts—Standing Committee—Report 7—2002-2003 Annual and Financial Reports of the Chief Minister’s Department, Department of Treasury, other related agencies and the ACT Legislative Assembly Secretariat, dated February 2004, together with a copy of the extracts of the relevant minutes of proceedings.

I seek leave to move a motion authorising the report for publication.

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